Please tell us how you have integrated global awareness into your science curriculum. Feel free to have discussions with one another regarding this topic. Also, upload any applicable documents you have created and share any useful links you have found.
Science and Global Issues was based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0352453. This link has a description of each unit (these may give you ideas) and a sample biology lesson with student and teacher handouts, etc. If you use this resource, be sure to come back and let us know how it worked for you.
"The GAIA Project (Global Awareness, Investigation and Action) is a climate change initiative that aims to inspire middle and high school students around the world to perform environmental research and sustainability on a local, regional, and global basis. GAIA emphasizes collaboration between students and local peers from a spectrum of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds through field trips and forums. Regional and global communication is enabled through virtual classrooms, forums and science camps. Unlike other simulations, GAIA will produce and publish actual scientific research while strengthening student achievement across the entire curriculum. GAIA Israel offers local schools the opportunity to tap into the educational resources of WBAIS Israel (The Walworth Barbour American International School in Israel) and invites your students to join a stimulating experience to promote science and research. The GAIA initiative offers equipment, mentoring, a small stipend, free training for teachers as well as students, opportunities for student researchers to publish their contributions, and possibilities to attend a summer science camp. Three international schools are the hubs for this program: AIS Israel, International School of Monterey, and the Caltex American School ofSumatra. We invite you to become one of our local partners" (from the video description).
OUTCOME: Students can articulate how technology is essential to science for such purposes as sample collection and treatment, measurement, data collection and storage, computation, and communication of information. EXAMPLE: Students participate in an established national or international e-science initiative that uses distributed ICT networks to collect scientific data. Students gather and analyze local data or deploy local sensors that contribute to a larger computer-network enabled database. Examples include studies of butterflies, amphibians, bird migrations, local climate variations, and radioastronomy signal analyses. OUTCOME: Students can identify the difference between scientific theories (which can be improved through new evidence and expanded through exceptions to observed patterns) and beliefs (which may or may not be based on evidence). EXAMPLE: Students examine satellite images of the Earth and distinguish geologic structures from signs of plant and animal activity—including human-created patterns—then compare those patterns to images of other planets and their moons. This information is used as the basis for discussion on what evidence for life on other planets we might be able to detect.
OUTCOME: Students are able to revise their own scientific ideas and hypotheses based on new evidence or information. EXAMPLE: Students design their own means of observing and/ or testing the Earth’s direction of rotation that includes working remotely with students in other countries to investigate the commonly held idea that water goes down a drain in different directions in the northern and southern hemispheres.
OUTCOME: Students are able to successfully apply their scientific knowledge and scientific reasoning skills to a variety of situations and new areas of study. EXAMPLE: Student teams choose a habit or practice in which they engage that carries risks about which they have concerns (sport injuries, flying in an airplane, eating fatty foods). They research the relative risks for those activities compared to other activities about which they don’t generally worry. Students develop questions and data analysis measures for an online survey that they administer to their classmates. They analyze survey results to explore any discrepancies they discover in
OUTCOME: Students can explain how personal, societal, and cultural perspectives influence the scientific questions people pursue, and how people interpret scientific information. EXAMPLE: After studying the background content of a current scientific or technology related issue, discovery, or event, student teams use online news sources and internet radio broadcasts from other countries to compare and contrast international coverage of the topic with that of U.S. media. Students identify different uses of wording, including persuasive, derogatory, etc. Students examine how the informational and editorial aspects of reporting on science might be different in other cultures and in diverse American sub-cultures, then use social networking tools or wikis to discuss these differences with students in other regions of the country or other countries.
The Partnership also explains, "Science is an international enterprise that benefits from cross-cultural perspectives and multi-national collaborations. Many pressing issues of scientific study can only be addressed on a global systems scale" (p. 15).
OUTCOME: Students can articulate how technology is essential to science for such purposes as sample collection and treatment, measurement, data collection and storage, computation, and communication of information.
EXAMPLE: Students participate in an established national or international e-science initiative that uses distributed ICT networks to collect scientific data. Students gather and analyze local data or deploy local sensors that contribute to a larger computer-network enabled database. Examples include studies of butterflies, amphibians, bird migrations, local climate variations, and radioastronomy signal analyses.
OUTCOME: Students can identify the difference between scientific theories (which can be improved through new evidence and expanded through exceptions to observed patterns) and beliefs (which may or may not be based on evidence).
EXAMPLE: Students examine satellite images of the Earth and distinguish geologic structures from signs of plant and animal activity—including human-created patterns—then compare those patterns to images of other planets and their moons. This information is used as the basis for discussion on what evidence for life on other planets we might be able to detect.
OUTCOME: Students are able to revise their own scientific ideas and hypotheses based on new evidence or information.
EXAMPLE: Students design their own means of observing and/ or testing the Earth’s direction of rotation that includes working remotely with students in other countries to investigate the commonly held idea that water goes down a drain in different directions in the northern and southern hemispheres.
OUTCOME: Students are able to successfully apply their scientific knowledge and scientific reasoning skills to a variety of situations and new areas of study.
EXAMPLE: Student teams choose a habit or practice in which they engage that carries risks about which they have concerns (sport injuries, flying in an airplane, eating fatty foods). They research the relative risks for those activities compared to other activities about which they don’t generally worry. Students develop questions and data analysis measures for an online survey that they administer to their classmates. They analyze survey results to explore any discrepancies they discover in
OUTCOME: Students can explain how personal, societal, and cultural perspectives influence the scientific questions people pursue, and how people interpret scientific information.
EXAMPLE: After studying the background content of a current scientific or technology related issue, discovery, or event, student teams use online news sources and internet radio broadcasts from other countries to compare and contrast international coverage of the topic with that of U.S. media. Students identify different uses of wording, including persuasive, derogatory, etc. Students examine how the informational and editorial aspects of reporting on science might be different in other cultures and in diverse American sub-cultures, then use social networking tools or wikis to discuss these differences with students in other regions of the country or other countries.
The Partnership also explains, "Science is an international enterprise that benefits from cross-cultural perspectives and multi-national collaborations. Many pressing issues of scientific study can only be addressed on a global systems scale" (p. 15).